Was it just a trick of the eyes that made her think she saw a group of glinting lights in the center of one of the larger craters? Could there be an unknown civilization up on that moon, living in a town of their own? If she could just get a bit closer…
But eventually Leafa was caught by the end of the world, the game’s altitude limit. Her speed dropped abruptly and her body grew heavy. The virtual world ended right ahead. It just wasn’t possible to go any farther. But…
Leafa reached out as far as she could, spreading her fingers as though to grab the moon.
I want to go there. Higher. Farther. Out of the stratosphere, free from gravity, to that moon world. And beyond that, too—between the planets, surpassing the comets, out into the ocean of stars…
Her upward acceleration finally died and went negative. Leafa went into a free fall in the night sky, her arms held wide. Bit by bit, the moon grew smaller.
Leafa closed her eyes and smiled.
Maybe not yet, but soon…
According to Kirito, ALfheim Online was in the planning stages to join a vast VRMMO nexus. They’d start by interfacing with a game set on the surface of the moon. Once that happened, she’d be able to fly there. Eventually others would join and take their places as planets, and interstellar ferries would be able to take her through the cosmos.
I can fly anywhere. I can go anywhere…except for one place.
The thought suddenly made her sad. She hugged herself tight as she fell toward the fluffy cloud layer.
She knew why she felt lonely. It was because of the party she’d attended in the real world with Kirito—her brother, Kazuto.
It was so much fun. She’d been able to meet many of his friends in person for the first time, to talk face-to-face. Those three hours had passed in a blink.
But at the same time, she felt the existence of a bond that tied them all together, something invisible but powerful: the memories of their shared battles, tears, laughs, and love from the floating castle of Aincrad. Even now, back in the real world, these things shone brightly within them.
Her love for Kazuto had not changed.
She felt the same sensation of warm sunlight when she said good night in his doorway, or ran to the station with him in the morning.
If they’d been true siblings, or total strangers growing up in different cities, she might have shed bitter tears. But she was lucky: She got to spend every day living with him under the same roof. She didn’t need his entire heart. As long as there was a tiny bit of space in there for her, that was enough.
I’ve finally gotten myself to be content with that.
But at that party, she’d felt a premonition that Kazuto would one day travel far away, far beyond her reach. She couldn’t intrude into that bond that group shared. There was no place for Suguha there; she held no memories of that castle.
Leafa curled into a ball and dropped like a meteor.
The clouds were very close. The meeting place was in the new Yggdrasil City, built into the top of the World Tree. She needed to spread her wings and begin gliding soon. But the coldness sealing her heart prevented her from doing so.
The cold wind brushed her cheek, stealing the warmth from her breast. She sank deeper, deeper into the dark sea of clouds…
Suddenly, something caught her, stopping her fall.
“——?!”
Leafa’s eyes shot open in surprise.
There was Kirito’s face, right in front of her. He was holding her in his arms, hovering just above the clouds. Before she could ask why, the tanned spriggan spoke.
“I was wondering how far you’d go. C’mon, the meeting’s just about to start.”
“…Oh…Thanks.”
Leafa smiled, beat her wings, and rolled out of his arms.
The management operating the new ALfheim Online received the entire collection of game data from RCT Progress, which included within it the old character data from Sword Art Online. The operators decided that when former SAO players started an account in the new ALO, they could choose to carry over their old character and appearance from SAO if they wished.
Therefore, Leafa’s regular partners—Silica, Asuna, Lisbeth—were extremely close to their original appearance, just with a few fairylike features added. But when Kirito was given the choice, he decided to stick with his spriggan form, rather than return to his old look. He also reset his phenomenal statistics so that he could start over from the beginning.
Leafa was struck with a sudden urge to know why, so she asked Kirito as they hovered side by side.
“Hey, Big Br…Kirito, why didn’t you go back to your old look like the others?”
“Hmm…”
He folded his arms and looked hazily into the distance, and then grinned.
“The Kirito from that world finished his quest.”
“…I see,” she laughed.
The thought that she was the one who had first happened across Kirito the spriggan and helped him travel to the World Tree filled her with a kind of pride. She floated over and took his hand.
“Let’s dance.”
“Huh?”
His eyes went wide. She tugged at his arm and slid over the top of the clouds.
“It’s an advanced technique just recently developed. You can move around sideways while maintaining a hover.”
“Ohh…”
That seemed to have stimulated his desire for a good challenge. He attempted to mimic her movements, his face locked in concentration. But he soon tipped forward and lost his balance.
“Nwah!”
“Hee-hee! It won’t work if you try to accelerate forward. It’s more like the teensiest bit of lift, plus a glide to the side.”
“Hrrm…”
Leafa pulled him by the arm, and after a few minutes of awkward stumbling, Kirito seemed to have gotten the hang of it.
“Oh…I see, like this?”
“That’s it. You’re doing good!”
Leafa smiled and took a small bottle from her waist pocket. She pulled out the cork and let it float in midair. Little dots of silver light flooded out of the bottle, along with the sound of a beautiful string ensemble. It was a musical item sold by high-level pooka minstrels, a recording of one of their performances.
Leafa began to step gracefully to the rhythm.
Big step, little step, big again, they floated through the air. She stared into Kirito’s eyes as they held hands, helping him decide which direction to turn in the moment.
They spun and spun across the endless ocean of clouds, lit by pale moonlight. Their slow, graceful actions gradually went faster, farther, with each step of the dance.
The green light scattered by Leafa’s wings and the white light of Kirito’s mingled in the air and vanished. The sound of the wind faded away. She shut her eyes.
She could feel all of Kirito’s emotions and sentiments through his fingertips. This could be the last time for that. It was another one of those rare but magical moments where their hearts made direct contact. This would probably be the last of those.
Kirito—Kazuto—had his own world. School, friends, and those even closer. His wings were so strong, his stride so long, that she would never be able to reach him.
Their paths had been going in different directions ever since the day two years ago that he’d left for that other world and hadn’t come back. She’d found this pair of fairy wings in the hopes that they would bring her closer, but half of the hearts of Kirito and the others were still within that floating castle of fantasy.
Scientific progress had made the world of the imagination impossibly real. It had surpassed the construct of a simple “game” and made the virtual into reality. But people are not built to live in many realities. Kazuto had experienced too much joy, sadness, and love in that other world. The world of dreams, a place Suguha herself would never visit.
She felt tears squeezing through her shut eyelids.
“Leafa…?” Kirito said into her ear.
She opened he
r eyes and looked at his smiling face. The music coming from the little bottle faded out, and the bottle itself quietly shattered into nothing.
“I’m going to go back home for today,” she said, letting go of his hands.
“Huh? Why…?”
“Because…” She felt the tears return. “It’s just…too far away from me. The place where you and everyone else are. I can’t reach you there.”
“Sugu…” He stared at her solemnly, then shook his head. “That’s not true. You can go anywhere if you set your mind to it.”
He took her hand without waiting for an answer, squeezed it, and turned away.
“Ah…”
Kirito beat his wings powerfully and began to accelerate. He headed straight for the World Tree, across the sea of clouds.
Kirito raced along at ferocious speed, not easing his grip on Leafa’s hand an ounce. She struggled to keep up so that she wouldn’t be dragged along.
In time, the World Tree grew large enough to cover their view of the sky. At the top of the trunk, where the first massive limbs branched out, there was a gathering of countless tiny lights: Yggdrasil City.
Kirito flew toward a tower in the center that stood taller and brighter than the others. Just as they got close enough to discern between the lights beyond open windows and the lights hanging from streetlamps, a great pealing of many bells sounded.
It was Alfheim’s signal for midnight. The sound emitted from the great hollow space within the trunk of the tree, wherein an elevator between Alne and Yggdrasil City had been installed. From there, the sound traveled across the entire world.
Kirito spread his wings to come to an abrupt stop.
“Whoa—!” Leafa wasn’t quick enough to react, and she would have collided with him if he hadn’t stretched out his arms to snag her.
“We didn’t make it in time. Here it comes.”
“Huh?”
She looked at him, uncomprehending. Kirito smiled and winked, pointing to a stretch of sky above. She turned around in his arms and looked up at the night sky.
The gigantic full moon was glowing with a cold blue light. But that was all.
“Um…it’s the moon. What about it?”
“Look closer.” He gestured higher. She squinted.
Along the upper right curve of the silver circle, a tiny piece was missing.
“Huh…?”
She looked harder. An eclipse? But nothing like that had ever happened in Alfheim, to her knowledge.
The black shadow stealing over the moon grew and grew. But the shape itself was not a circle. It was like a triangular wedge, digging farther and farther into the sphere. A low growl hit Leafa’s ears. Something was echoing heavily—gong, gong. It shook the entire atmosphere, as if emanating from a great distance.
The shadow was now blocking out the moon entirely. But the moon’s light, wrapping around, did still dimly illuminate the contours of the triangular shadow. Larger it grew. Larger, and closer—
It was a conical object, but the distance to it was hard to grasp. Leafa squinted for a better look.
The floating object suddenly lit up on its own. Bright beams of yellow light sprayed in all directions.
It seemed to be made of a great many thin layers that were stacked on top of each other, and the light was streaming from between the layers. Three massive pillars hung from the bottom of the object, ending in points that glowed on their own.
A ship? A house? Leafa couldn’t tell. Meanwhile, the thing only got more gargantuan. It was completely blocking out an entire part of the sky. The heavy rumbling vibrated her body.
Suddenly, she realized that she could see something between the bottom two layers. Tiny little fixtures sprouting up and down. In fact, they looked like…
Buildings! There were a number of massive buildings with several floors’ worth of windows. But based on the size of the building, each one of the dozens of layers had to be at least as tall as the Tower of Wind. In that case, how tall must the entire structure be? How many hundreds and hundreds of feet? How many miles…?
“Ah…that— that can’t be…” A shocking thought shot through Leafa’s brain. “Is that…?”
She turned and looked at Kirito. He nodded gravely, but couldn’t keep the excitement from his voice.
“That’s right. It’s Aincrad, the floating castle.”
“But…why? Why is it here…?”
The floating structure slowed its approach, and stopped when it was nearly close enough to touch the highest branches of the World Tree.
“So we can finish what we started,” he replied softly. “We’ll beat it from the first floor to the hundredth this time. I only got three-quarters of the way through last time. Leafa…”
He let his hand rest on top of her head. “I’m a lot weaker than I used to be…You’ll help me, won’t you?”
“…Ah…”
The word caught in her throat. She stared at him.
You can go anywhere if you set your mind to it.
Tears fell down her cheeks again, falling to Kirito’s shirt.
“Yeah. I’ll be with you…together…wherever you go…”
A voice floated up to them from below as they gazed at the impossibly large castle.
“Hey! You’re late, Kirito!”
Leafa looked back to see Klein rising to meet them, a yellow-and-black bandanna pushing up his red hair and a wildly long katana at his side.
Next to him was Agil with his massive battle-ax, his brown skin the mark of a gnome.
Lisbeth, with her white-and-blue apron, and a silver leprechaun hammer.
Silica, with luscious black ears and tail, a little blue dragon on her shoulder.
Sasha, who was not yet used to flying, wobbling along with her flight stick.
Sakuya and Alicia Rue, with their own contingent of sylphs and cait siths.
Recon, waving wildly.
Even Eugene the salamander and some of his men.
“C’mon, we’re gonna leave you in the dust!” Klein shouted, and the entire ensemble raced off through the night, heading for the castle in the sky.
Last of all, dressed in a white tunic and miniskirt with a silver rapier at her side, stood Asuna, a tiny pixie on her shoulder. She stopped in front of Leafa and Kirito, her long hair waving.
“Let’s go, Leafa!” Asuna urged, extending a hand. Leafa took it hesitantly. Asuna smiled and turned, beating her pale blue wings.
Yui hopped off of her shoulder and landed on Kirito’s. “Hurry up, Papa!”
Kirito gave Aincrad a brief but serene gaze before hanging his head. His lips moved, as though saying someone’s name to himself, but his voice was inaudible.
When he looked up again, Kirito was wearing his usual invincible smile. He spread his wings and pointed up to the heavens.
“All right—let’s go!!”
(The End)
AFTERWORD
Hello, this is Reki Kawahara. Thank you for picking up Sword Art Online 4: Fairy Dance, my eighth published book.
This two-volume story was both a continuation of the story from Volume 1, and a very, very long epilogue. At the time I started writing it, I was only planning on having it be about the hero, Kirito, searching for and finding the heroine, Asuna. But the more I added to the story, the longer it grew in the telling.
One of those features I tried to explore was the question, “Can you write a novel just about playing a normal RPG?”
At the time I wrote SAO Volume 1, I thought that an RPG story required something extra to work as a proper novel. After all, no matter the terrible odds the hero faces in a game, the person controlling him in real life doesn’t suffer a single scratch. In order to sidestep the dual issues of “it’s just a game” and “you can start over at any time,” I came up with the concept of the game of death: Dying within the game means dying in real life.
But there was a part of me that wondered if this was really true. If an RPG novel isn’t worth it without a catch like that,
then what does that say about all the thrills and chills I’ve experienced playing MMOs? Were they false emotions? I wanted to try evoking the excitement and fun I had when my friends and I formed a party and challenged our first dungeon. That ended up being a large creative theme within Fairy Dance.
I suppose you’ll know whether I succeeded or not if, having just turned the final page, you feel like trying out an MMO right now (ha-ha).
The very straightforward “virtual-reality online game” SAO series is going to take a big shift in the next volume, whether that ends up being ill-advised or just plain chaotic. Those readers who enjoyed the taste of the original story might be extremely confused, but I assure you that Kirito will continue to be the unchanging core of the series, so I hope you’ll continue to partake in his adventures.
Once again, great thanks must go out to Abec for her delicate illustrations of all the new characters and monsters, and to my editor, Mr. Miki, for putting up with my terribly late submissions! And all the rest of the gratitude remaining in my hard drive goes out to you for reading this!
Reki Kawahara—January 28, 2010
Thank you for buying this ebook, published by Yen On.
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